Abstract
Dreams always come true earlier than we expect. As mentioned in the last editorial in the issue of May 2024, in the annual Owners’ meeting with the three international social work organizations, namely, International Association of Schools of Social Work (IAASW), International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), as well as the colleagues of Sage Publications in Panama City, two pieces of good news were received, as follows:
In 2018, the journal had an impact factor of 0.6; in 2023, the impact factor was 2.2, which means 3.5 times or a 350 percent advancement,
In 2018, the journal was at the bottom of Q3 journal rankings, ranked at number 34 out of 55 social work journals; in 2023, the journal was rated number 15 at the top of Q2.
Although we are not working for the key performance indictors only, the message itself was really encouraging. At that time, we decided that we should spend 3 years to make improvements to further upgrade our journal to the Q1, that is, the top 25 percent of social work journals. Just 3 days after, when we came back to Brisbane and Hong Kong, we received more good news. In the journal ranking data of 2023, International Social Work (ISW) journal has already advanced to number 14. Eventually, the ISW has become one of the top journals in the category of social work.
As social workers, let us be humble in front of success as this is a way to make it sustainable. The editorial team is following the mission to work towards our vision. As we mentioned to the three international social work organizations, what we are loyal to is social work and ISW is both a professional journal and an academic journal, which is an international platform for social work practitioners, scholars, students and relevant stakeholders to generate and share ideas as well as pursue ideals in serving our clients all over the world to actualize safety, love, justice and human dignity.
When we revisit our mission, please let us refer to our first editorial (O’Leary and Tsui, 2019) published in January 2019, in Vol 62 No 1: (1) to define and develop the nature, boundaries and diversity of social work practice internationally; (2) to provide an interactive and accessible platform for generating and sharing new knowledge in social work theory and practice; (3) to foster diverse representation of the international social work community in readership, authors, reviewers and board leadership; and (4) to provide a creditable evidence base for advancement of the status and profile of social work globally. By using a different approach, we make full use of our editorials to shape and share the horizon of international social work practice. We also made every effort to refine the manuscripts for sharing instead of rejecting them. We not only keep close contacts with solid scholars but also welcome young scholars, practitioners and students to join the writing and reviewing efforts. We cherish differences and diversities as we believe that social work should be both local and global and international social work should be both the South and the North. Eventually, international communication and collaborations will make the world and our professional practice more colourful and fruitful.
The last 5 years have been challenging locally and globally for many of us. We do not expect that the next 5 years will be any less challenging. We do hope that we can meet these challenges with renewed resilience and scholarship to build peace, civility, equity, justice and sustainability in order to disrupt entrenched inequality, injustice, environmental harm and violent conflict. The five objectives set for our next term of office are (1) to discover and discuss important and interesting issues from the social work field locally with global implications for worldwide social work; (2) to expand the readership of ISW (in terms of downloads and subscriptions); (3) to enhance the diversity of ISW (in terms of format, contents, contributors, global representation and readers); (4) to increase the impact factor and ranking of ISW; and (5) to demonstrate the impact of social work research and practice, while advocating for critical issues for reflection and action.
Following these directions, we keep our mind and eyes on the ever-changing contexts for international social work. In the last 5 years, the most important challenges were (1) the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) the geo-political divisions in the world, (3) the climate crisis and (4) IT, AI and related challenges and opportunities. We took initiatives to encourage the discussions, deliberations and debates on the roles and functions of social workers in the face of these challenges. Our editorial, ‘Ten gentle reminders to social workers in the pandemic’ (O’Leary and Tsui, 2020) was widely read and cited; it showed how the journal can be a connection across boundaries in times of crisis, reinforcing that we are a global profession. We were fortunate to receive good responses from social workers. There were more submissions, more reads and more citations. The journal is becoming an interactive and accessible major platform for sharing.
Of course, our mission is incomplete; we receive more than 300 manuscripts every year. With the full support from Sage Publications, we try to bring as many manuscripts to being accepted for publication. With the support of the journal manager and the reviewers, we cut the handling period of every manuscript much shorter than before. We still know we have work to do in improving the process and supporting our readers and authors. However, we are still lacking adequate reviewers and sometimes we receive complaints from author(s) about the delay in processing the manuscripts. In the near future, we are going to look for more associate editors, invite and train up more reviewers.
After 5 years of joint efforts, it is time for us to review our operations, reflect on the whole process and renew our mindset. As you can see, not only do we have plans but also reflections that will take us forward. It is also time to celebrate and acknowledge the journey so far. First, we would like to take this opportunity to say thank you from our heart (we have only one heart when we are working together) to each other as the co-editors. It is an amazing partnership in the last 5 years. In fact, through this editorial process, the friendship and scholarship between the two co-editors is a blessing in our life and academic career. Of course, without the unfailing support from the Journal Manager, Mrs Louise Robson, all the achievements would still be a dream. We would also like to thank all the associate editors, Professor Lesley Chenoweth, Professor Donna McAuliffe, Professor Jennifer Boddy, Dr Joe Liang, Dr Lucy Jordan, Dr Peace Wong, Dr Kitty Mo and Dr Aisha Hutchison for their valuable and timely advice on reviewing the manuscripts. As an international journal, the translation of the abstracts from English into other major languages helps a lot in distributing the ideas to various parts of the world; the credits should go to the volunteer translators. Of course, the directions, full confidence and autonomy given by the leaders of the international social work organizations and the publisher are the foundations of the success. Last but not the least, numerous peer reviewers in various parts of the world spend their leisure time reading, reviewing and recommending manuscripts to us. We can never forget their contributions to the upkeeping of social work values and the development of relevant professional knowledge. As we mentioned in the first editorial ‘from a small step to a milestone . . .’ (O’Leary and Tsui, 2019), let us walk together in this journal with ‘shared vision’, and we are excited to be walking further with you all.